Travel Agents Case Study

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Is there a future for the travel agent? Discuss.
‘An intermediary who acts as a broker between the tour operator and consumer’ is the delineation of a travel agent, cited by Page and Connell (2014). Travel agents partake in the arrangement of selling accommodation, flights, insurance and other travel and tourism related services. This essay will discuss in extensive detail the importance of travel agents, provide various views and opinions and conclude with a possible answer to: ‘is there a future for the travel agent?’
To begin with, travel agents have very important roles and functions in the travel and tourism industry. Travel agents are ‘a convenient location where potential travellers may first obtain all the information necessary to make …show more content…

It could be argued that there is not a future for travel agents, firstly, this is because some travel agents may not provide completely accurate information or may favour specific holidays because of the commission they receive from it. This is one of the main reasons for disintermediation: ‘a reduction in the amount of value of transactions that are distributed through intermediaries’, according to Cooper et al (2009). Anne Roderique-Jones (2013), a writer for Woman’s Day alludes that travel agents are ‘trying to influence vacation decisions based on perks on offer at that particular time’, suggesting that they may not be giving their customers enough choices of holidays or they are providing more information on a holiday to benefit them. Secondly, travel agents lack travel experience. Roderique-Jones also states in her article that travel agents tell their customers lies on where they have visited because the holiday is more expensive. It follows therefore that travel agents will say they have been to a destination only to make it sound more appealing. These factors discourage the potential future for travel agents because they become impractical to customers, considering that they will be able to find the information themselves, and …show more content…

Specialised travel agents are available to consumers to undertake exceptional and eccentric requests, usually from affluent clients. Some specialised travel agents specialise in business travel attributable to the great significance of business travel is regularly unexpected, therefore unplanned, and on various occasions involves premium-priced travel. These specialised travel agents have to the same role as regular travel agents: to organise air tickets can arrange accommodation and car rentals, but they do this for corporate

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